It sucks.
Part of me just wants to repeat those two words 250 times and be done with the subject. But, even though this is my personal webspace, a tiny little corner of the vast Internet, I do try to present my work and my thoughts in a more professional manner than that. If this were a post on Tumblr in the midst of a miasma of self-doubt and loathing, yeah, I might just type “IT SUCKS” over and over again. But let’s talk about it, here.
I think a lot of people have some misconceptions about depression.
There are certainly days when it is difficult to overcome the miasma of gray clouds and dark thoughts that weigh down the mind of the victim. However, the desire for overcoming is still there. It’s definitely stronger on some days more than others, but it never really goes away. Think of it like this: if someone loses their legs, they still want to cross a room entirely under their own power, but extra effort is required, with arms or wheels or prostheses. Suffering from depression is a lot like that, only it’s entirely cerebral, and not at all as well recognized or supported.
You have to look at it that way, though. Depression is a disease. It’s a disability. You suffer from it. It plays merry hell on your confidence, your expectations, your energy, and your ambitions. And it isn’t something someone just “gets over”. You can’t just “snap yourself out” of depression. You can take steps to mitigate it, surround yourself with a support network to stave off its effects, get yourself in front of a therapist, and even begin a regimen of medication. But, in the end, the disability is there. It’s just under the surface. And it isn’t going away.
It sucks.
It comes in a whole lot of flavors, too. It’s part of bipolar disorder, it can be affected and invoked by seasonal change, it can even emerge as the result of childbirth. As if allowing new life to gestate within your body wasn’t hard enough, and dealing with all of the bullshit that comes with being seeing as good for nothing more than that by a great deal of the world’s population, mothers have to deal with depression on top of everything? That’s just straight-up unfair.
So depression sucks. It needs to be acknowledged as a disability and a disease. It keeps people away from their passions. It saps energy, costs productive hours, and drains all sorts of resources as it runs roughshod over the psyches and emotions of a lot of people who feel ashamed or uncertain about bringing their problems into the light. This is unforgivable. If someone was crippled from birth or in an accident, or contracted a debilitating disease with outward shows, like cancer or leprosy, the need for help would be undeniable.
But depression, on top of everything else, is invisible. It’s invasive and insidious, sure, but invisible, as well?
Fuck you, depression.
